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Perseid Meteor Showers
obfuscated writes "'Flying gravel bank' attacks the Earth's atmosphere; damage unknown. Visible now and peaking on August 12th, the Perseid meteor shower is back to trained and amateur sky watchers. At its peak as many as 60 or more shooting stars can be visible per hour from the Northern Hemisphere. This year's viewing should be especially good since the 'Earth is expected to encounter the core of the Perseid swarm, where meteoroid concentration is densest, next Monday.' Space.com as well as MSN has the full text."
I'll be in a plane over the Atlantic during the height of the showers... does that mean I'll get a kick-ass view?
The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we're uncool. -Crowe
About time Earth had another shower - the smell's really starting to get to me
Taking the fam, going camping far far away from the city lights.
Have a nice weekend!
"Oh look at the meteor shower... why aren't those meteors getting bigger, and bigger and.."
(meteor coming towards them)
"Arrghhhh!!!"
(Song: Paranoid Android by Radiohead - the 'rain down' section)
Moral: Life is like a load of Meteors, you never know you're gonna get hit!
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
What is your best wish?
Think the media will blow this out of proportion?
I can just hear it...
"This just in: Meteor shower on collision course with earth! Could this be the end? We'll find out, right after this message from Charmin."
I'd like to know what people should expect if they live in the southern hemisphere... Will it be better, the same, or nothing? (I suppose it should be similar because the earth rotates every day)
unfinished: (adj.)
This is one shower you can take with your whole family!
If you've just started dating then you can take your date out for a late night stroll and share your first shower together.
If you have a friend who lives a long way away then just get on the phone, you can take a shower together even at long range.
And the best part it is free, as in beer, speech and worship of Artemis.
Oh the fun you will have.
Don't expect we'll see much in Western Europe. There just aren't any wide open spaces any more.
Check out how bad it is on this map at Atlas
Maybe we should have a slashdot appeal to turn out all the lights on Monday night.
Here's wishing dark skies to everyone.
1. Don't even bother with binocs, much less a scope.
2. Get outside of the city and lay on the hood of your car.
3.Bring a flashlight with a red filter to save your night vision.
4. The Perseids come from a point near the constellation Perseus (go figure). It's actually closer to Cassiopeia, which is much easier to find (it's the big W). Find this point for the best viewing.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
I'm looking forward to seeing the shower again, but I wasn't expecting it this soon. My perception of time appears to have changed in the past few years.
Did you ever notice how news like this gets the crop circle nuts and alien zealots crawling out of the woodwork? Has there ever been any study that relates this kind of news with outlandish reports(aliens, I got probed and the lot.)? I would like to see those statistics.
I often like to sit out underneath the stars with a close girl-friend of mine, but one thing stands in the way of us seeing the natural beauty of the stars: Light Pollution.
When you mention this to people they often admit to not having noticed it before; after all, when was the last time you've been somewhere that strange sodium yellow streak wasn't shooting across the sky? If you weren't thinking about it you might take it to be a natural aura.
I saw a photo a while back (on the printed page, I've searched on Google and couldn't find it) of the night sky a 1000 miles west of Sydney Australia : the sky was still scared by the bright lights.
I found this picture on Google of light pollution from space: Light pollution over Canada circa 1975 As far as I am aware, this is of Canada, all though the picture isn't very clear I'm afraid it does illustrate a point about the long-reaching effects of light pollution.
On the greater impact outside of amateur sky watches, I can imagine this greatly hampers the efforts of earth-bound telescopes, and obviously explains why they are in such remote locations.
Is there anywhere on earth with NO light pollution?
has a really cool colored picture with their story covering this.. thought i was having a flashback..
Is it just me, or does the work "meteorioid" make you cringe?
Finding a dark sky near you.
It looks like I-35 is roughly the dividing line between a much lighter East and generally darker West. Luckily, I live just west of said road, and can head further west to watch from the top of a big bald rock.
> as many as 60 or more
It's bad enough that we have to put up with this kind of vague language in advertisements... but now in technical writing? "As many as" signifies an upper bound. "or more" extends that, which makes that bound meaningless. If some code takes "as much as 5 ms or more" to run, how fast is it? If a new PC came with "as much as 256 MB or more" RAM, would you buy it?
Argh!
and that was a pretty dark place - way out in the middle of the Atlantic. *when it wasn't overcast*, the night sky was perfect. Not many groupings of bright lights on the island I was on (Terciera), if you don't count the runway lights of the airport or maybe the bullfighting ring. One could always take a boat out further into the darkness...stay out of the shipping lanes!
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Theater/6882/ Triffids.html
It's two years old, but here is a really nice composite of world light polution, and a "brief explanation written by a professional astronomer."
Here's the story on being able to hear the Leonids?.
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
I'll be in a plane over the Atlantic during the height of the showers... does that mean I'll get a kick-ass view?
Depends on the direction you're flying.
- If perseus is behind you you'll get a kick-ass view.
- If it's in front of you you'll get an in-your-face view.
- If it's beside you you'll get an in-your-ear view.
B-)
But figuratively:
You'll get a good view if it's behind or in front - because you'll be looking to the sides of the aircraft (unless you're in the cockpit). Looking directly at the radiant or directly away from it is not too impressive. Looking 90 degrees from it gives you lots of pretty streaks to watch.
By the way - it ought to be GREAT this year. I was in Nevada over the weekend - about 5000 feet above sea level in a dark area - and there were already quite a few bright ones showing.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Looks like VD to me. It's for everyone, after all, not just you and me. Like father like son? How about, Take it off, take it all off (David Rose track playing)? Hi Karate?
If your listening you may hear me or other ham radio operators.
These showers are great for meteor scatter contacts. Traditionally, meteor scatter operators use CW (Morse code) or SSB to propagate signals via the ionized trails left by meteors entering our atmosphere. Some operators use SSB, but to be successful in the voice mode requires long meteor burns, which are less common than the short duration ("pings") of a typical meteor. Thus, high-speed CW is the way to get the most intelligence propagated in the short amount of time that most meteors offer.
This year I plan on using a new mode called WJST. It is a very high speed CW. The software can be downloaded for free from http://pulsar.princeton.edu/~joe/K1JT/
Hope to hear you on the rocks!
My birthday is the 12th - I really love this. There's just something really special about celebrating your birthday by watching a meteor shower.
I'm the stranger...posting to
The 1975 light polution photo seems to be of Southern Ontario. Ottawa is in the upper right. Windsor/Detroit are in the lower left. Toronto is central, while Niagara Falls is at the bottom.
Do they say American Roulette in Russia?
No, Las Vegas
Lump lingered last in line for brains, and the ones she got were sorta rotten and insane.
Fool. Realize that eight MILLION people live just across the Hudson river from the most putrid, foul, stinking swampish industrial wasteland that happens to be northeastern New Jersey. Not to mention the fact that if you take a wrong turn and go into NJ by mistake, you've gotta pay like $7 to get back to civilization!
I've seen more "shooting stars" in the last few days (nights) than I've seen in a long time. I can't wait for the big show...
Zoid.com
While at the Central Distric (PA) Fireman's Convention, Laura (a member of my fire company) and I saw one REALLY nice one right overhead. Nice and large, bright tail, and a crystal clear (and cold) night made for one of the best meteors I've seen. Best still belongs to the one that went down near Greenville, PA in 1997. Big, nifty green lights (copper on reentry?), and exploded about a 1000 feet above and in front of us.
I'm not a regular "watcher" of meteor showers, and I was pretty drunk, so this was really nifty to me. Forgive me if I've babbled mindlessly and lowered my geek rating.
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
...but they'll be hard-pressed to beat last year's Leonids.
New Jersey - free to get into, but you have to pay to get out.
That it will be the best one yet, but I'm always disappointed. One year though, I saw a really bright meteor streak across the sky, and I heard a loud crackling noise. No kidding.
WWJD? JWRTFA!
Just like Jail in Monopoly. Except Jail's hockey team didn't lose the East Conference championship to the Hartford Whalers.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
Meteor Photography:
Materials needed:
SLR Camera
50mm f/2 or faster lense, or even better -- a fisheye lense
400 or faster film -- multiple rolls are good
Tripod
Cable Release or self-timer
Procedure:
Set up your camera on its tripod outdoors on the night of the 12th or 13th. Point it near the radiant (a few degrees off to one side is good) and wait for the action to start. Then, connect your cable release or set your self-timer and open the lense for a 2-minute or so exposure. Exact times will vary depending on how light-polluted your location is, but that's about good. Then, every two minutes close the shutter and advance the film. You'll get a lot of pictures of star trails and hopefully a few really great shots of streaking meteors. If you see a really great one where your camera is pointing, go ahead and advance right then -- no point in fogging the film further.
\
I'm a stargazer myself. I'm heading this weekend for a small mountain near my home (Utah), where at least the light pollution is a LITTLE less pervasive.
Any sufficiently simple magic can be passed off as mere advanced technology.
A well, maybe I should have left the fam @ home if I wanted a good view.
The weather was great, the skies were clear (for the first time in a week) and the campsite remote enough for a spectacular view of the sky.
But I was out cold for the good viewing hours both nights we were there.
As an aside -- I don't think I've ever got 3 "Overrated"s before!
I stepped into the pseudo-darkness at approximately 12AM last even... nothing. Again, I stepped out at approximately 2AM... I saw -some- light meteor activity (5 give or take in about a 15 minute window). I'm 25 miles north of downtown Dallas, TX. I -thought- I was far enough from the city--actually I think I am BUT my neighborhood "decorative" waste of energy lighting washes out my view.
-JD